@RachelRayner has played NZSecretSanta for quite some time and, on moving to London, decided to take the idea with her – the following is a guest post from her on why she felt it a good idea.

Why I’m Bringing NZ Secret Santa to London

I’ve played NZSS for years now. It’s outlasted flats, jobs, and relationships as one of the true constants of the holiday season.

I love everything about it. The intrigue of guessing who might have me, picking out a gift for someone who’s no longer a stranger, and in seeing my recipient get excited when they open it.

This year, I’m in London. It’s a very different place than Auckland. Just the sheer crush of people makes you realise how much New Zealand is a small town – not that that’s a bad thing. In fact, there’s nothing lonelier than being alone in a crowd. I was talking colleagues over lunch, and they agreed with me. “The trouble is, no one talks to one another anymore,” said one. “We’ve got to bring that back. We’ve just got to. But I have no idea how.”

Talk about lightbulb moments. “I know how,” I said.

And that’s how London Secret Santa was born.

I have no idea if it’ll work, but there’s only one way to find out.

If you’re in London, play along. If you’re not in London, share it with your friends.

Registrations opened yesterday, so don’t forget to register – don’t delay, it should only take you a few minutes. If you run into any issues while signing up, drop us an email (nzsecretsanta@nzpost.co.nz) or a DM on Twitter and we’ll see you right.

Remember, there will be no extensions to the registration window this year – don’t miss out; register now.

Gifting to former refugee families

Our Community Partner NZ Red Cross are critical to new Kiwis settling into our country. Former refugees that settle in New Zealand are re-establishing themselves and their families and quite often need basic household goods as a start.

With a greater need to support Refugees than ever, we have a goal to provide all 800 new Kiwi families with a holiday gift to setup their new home.

If you want to send an additional gift to Santa’s Storehouse for former refugees being taken in by New Zealand and supported by the New Zealand Red Cross, we’ll make sure that’s possible. If you don’t want to, that’s cool – no one is going to judge you.

If you choose to send in a gift for the new Kiwi families, please keep the following in mind:

They don’t have much (in most cases, anything)

The gift should be family focused

Everything will be gratefully received

The gift for NZ Red Cross should be marked “RED CROSS GIFT” and separate to the gift for your NZ Secret Santa recipient (just to be safe…we don’t want gifts going to the wrong place!)

It’s also REALLY helpful for us when you use a tracked service to get the item to the storehouse – it means we can scan the parcel when it arrives and check it in quickly. 🙂 If you use a delivery service other than NZ Post, please enter the tracking number into your dashboard at https://nzsecretsanta.nzpost.co.nz so we know to expect it.

Questions? Confused? Want to chat?

We’re always happy to help when we can – drop us a line on Twitter (@nzsecretsanta) or via email if you’d prefer it remain private: nzsecretsanta@nzpost.co.nz.

Just quietly, we think we’re doing some pretty cool things in digital at New Zealand Post. Bringing the parcel and postal world online makes for a challenging and interesting time. We’ve generated some real momentum, but we need your help.

You will have the opportunity to work on a variety of projects focused on how our customers interact with us on the web and their mobiles. You’ll be supported by a small, friendly, productive and talented team which executes projects for our wider business, taking an end to end approach from design and research, to release to our customers. Our work is pretty unique, and constantly challenging.

You’ll need to have experience

working 3 + years working in a UX Design role

designing for different device and screen sizes, and its associated frustrations and rewards

usability testing either as a moderator or observer

wireframing and paper prototyping on a variety of interactive projects

running design workshops and managing stakeholders

You need to be

a passionate customer advocate

super great at communication, open and honest

confident, positive, and courageous enough to constructively challenge the team and the business when needed

able to easily collaborate with the online team and the wider NZ Post business

flexible, we’re big fans of great processes but we recognise that sometimes we need to shape our process to achieve deadlines

Registration will run for two weeks from Tuesday, 10 November to Tuesday 24 November. Unlike last year, there will be no extensions so make sure you get in while it’s open. Once you’ve signed yourself up, make sure you spread the word using #nzsecretsanta on Twitter and getting your Twitter community involved.

Once you’re registered, there’s nothing you need to do until we email you with who you’ll be playing Secret Santa for. That should be coming in hot on the afternoon of Wednesday, 25 November. Then you can start the REALLY fun part.

In the meantime, help us by spreading the word and getting as many people to sign up as you can. Of course, we’d love it if they were active on Twitter and all about the giving. Ho ho ho.

Charity involvement

As we mentioned last week, this year we’re getting behind the NZ Red Cross and giving them as much help as we can as part of the community spirit behind NZ Secret Santa.

This means that all of the gifts destined for a ‘Bad Santa’ will be donated to the Red Cross in a special morning tea in the week leading up to Christmas. We’re also planning to set up a Give a Little campaign to contribute a monetary donation, too. Full details of this and a couple of other cool things are coming up soon.

Questions? Confused? Want to chat?

We’re always happy to help when we can – drop us a line on Twitter (@nzsecretsanta) or via email if you’d prefer it remain private: nzsecretsanta@nzpost.co.nz.

* Last year a number of people were frustrated when we didn’t open registrations at midnight (or 00:01). We don’t have a set time in place, but we promise that we’ll tweet about it when it’s all go. 🙂

Ramping up for 2015

We had a great time in 2014 and got an amazing 2,618 Santas signed up to play!

We’re hoping for as many as we can get this year, but due to the numbers from last year, we’ll definitely be running registrations for a set period of time and no extensions will be issued, so make sure you register as soon as possible! Dates to come in the next week or so…watch this space, your email if you played last year, or nzsecretsanta.nzpost.co.nz.

Bad Santas

The term ‘Bad Santa’ doesn’t relate to just Billy Bob Thornton – in the context of NZ Secret Santa, a Bad Santa is someone who signs up to play but then doesn’t fulfil their end of the deal by sending in a gift for the person they’ve been matched with. Now, don’t get us wrong – there are legitimate reasons for some of these things and these have been taken into account (if the person has been in touch with us directly).

Like every other year where we’ve handled the administrative side of NZ Secret Santa, Bad Santas have unfortunately spoiled the fun for a number of people. In 2014, we decided that there would be a 2 strikes policy for Bad Santas. This comes into effect this year and is a very, very short list of folks who will be removed from the matching process if they sign up. We’ll talk to them directly, but we won’t be ‘outing’ them. Sorry.

Which charity?

As always, there is a silver lining. Gifts destined for ‘Bad Santas’ last year were instead donated to Christchurch City Mission. Again, they were massively grateful for the gifts to share with those in need at this special time of year and we also provided a monetary donation which was equally happily received.

This festive season, we’re working in co-operation with the New Zealand Red Cross with the aim of donating the gifts destined for ‘Bad Santas’ to them. We’re very excited about this and having the ability to bring joy to people outside the Twitter community is always a bonus.

More details on that to come.

We’re also thinking about running another Give a little campaign like we did last year, but would love to get your thoughts on that first. Let us know in the comments or via Twitter.

Gift sending options this year

Last year and in 2013 we gave you the option to print a postage label from nzpost.co.nz to stick on your parcel to get it to Santa’s Storehouse. We’ll be doing the same this year, but we’ve got a new option that might be useful for some.

Pickup – As part of the postage purchasing process (or, the PPP) you’ll be given an option to arrange a courier collection from wherever* you like. A courier will come to you, take your gift, and get it on it’s way. Easy as.

* Pickup is only available for Courier or Courier + Signature items and, while we can pickup from most places, there are some areas where pickup is not possible.

Feedback please!

These are our ideas so far. We’d now like to hear your thoughts and feedback before we make some decisions. We are very conscious that the game is owned by the community – we are just facilitators.

Let us know what you think about our suggestions in the comments below – or of course on Twitter (@nzsecretsanta).

You will have a clear purpose: to help the New Zealand Post online team provide the best possible experience to our customers on our web, mobile web and mobile app platforms. This role calls for a passionate customer advocate who is prepared to challenge the rest of the team (and the wider business). We’re all nice people – to get your message across you’ll need to be a nice person too. You’ll also need to be…

experienced. We are looking for the magic balance between intuition, experience of what you know works, and research/data driven recommendations.

persuasive. Your powers of persuasion will be needed to convince sceptics why your research insights are right for the customer.

able to pick your battles. Trade-offs often have to be made in the interests of velocity (delivering an improvement on a service that’s still flawed is better than not delivering), so you’ll have a sense of when to compromise.

passionate and respectful. We don’t have time for egos or drama in our team – respectful, open and creative conflict on the other hand is encouraged.

a doer. Someone who really likes to get stuff done.

lovely. You’ll spend a lot of time with our customers- whether face to face, on our customer feedback forums, on their turf or ours, you’ll need to have a good rapport with them.

The role itself involves…

working with the team to determine what, when and how to test – iteration is rapid

a lot of customer research. You’ll be gathering qualitative and quantitative data on which we can act, and suggesting solutions, not just pointing out problems, but we all like problem solving so you’ll have plenty of help.

understanding and presenting on how the wider customer journey interacts with new or improved online services

presenting findings regularly in an understandable and compelling way.

interaction design input. But is not a design role as such – you’ll work closely with the designer as well as the rest of the team.

working in a results driven, agile (Kanban) environment.

You’ll have licence to totally own this role and take our online customer experience to a world class level. You’ll be working in a small team of 100% committed, passionate and smart people – including developers, testers, delivery manager, designer/interaction designer, writer/IA person, analytics analyst, and product owners.

We believe that:

everything we do should be customer focused

we need to move fast

delivering early and often is vital

that iteration is normal

we need some help from you!

You’ll need to be a team player – you’re likely to find yourself helping us test (along with everyone else) or mucking in with other tasks when needed. You can apply by contacting Catherine Scott on (04) 496 4538 or catherine.scott@nzpost.co.nz.